Zwift, riding and racing.... update thread, info thread, motivational thread.

[weeksy]

awesome !!! Zwift is something you get used to the pain and the suffering as well as the tactics.

Lots of races go off split, not togetehr, they'll suit you better for sure.

Good job man !

[Crosshair]

how comes its such a mixed pool of talent???? or do they put pro's in with mortals ???

I sometimes wonder if everyone cheats somehow in the sprints.. but i can't see how it's possible. I also find it hard to believe i'm THAT shit at sprints... but that's how it seems to be. At the end, i've just got no kick... TBH i could come into the last 400m only, fresh as a daisy and i don't have that turn of speed.

The racing is grouped into 20 mins power cats, so it's mostly fair... just not in the last 300m for me

How many years have I been telling you to train your sprint
I can hit 1500w peak and more importantly do 970 for 10s.

Obviously in w/kg terms these are rubbish but for heavier, musclier riders 1100w is nothing.

Heck- I did 1100w up the final slope at Dirty Reiver after 9h55 constant riding

[Crosshair]

I must admit to doing a naughty one yesterday and riding a couple of D races for training

I didn’t influence anything mind you and annoyingly- both soon intermingled with the other cats.
My hopes at using D cat for endurance faded in the second race and I held the lead group of A’s around Insbrook as far as the hill at least.
Also picked up a sprint jersey during cooldown with 700w for 20 seconds

I think my fitness bump from dirty Reiver has arrived

[Crosshair]

Couple of C races today. Missed the lead group in both as didn’t want to go quite that hard! The London Classique race was very easy at times- cruising at 170w. But I still couldn’t break away from the blob of that group. I think I got second (from it) in the sprint. I also tried an old HRM strap that didn’t work so no result anyway.
Next race was Watopia Hilly reverse and again, I didn’t quite want to bury myself to stay with the leaders.
HR was low for the power but I guess that’s fitness/fatigue kicking in. Aiming to do 12 hours total this week which makes it annoying that Zwift missed off some of the warm up rides before and between races as every minute counts

[weeksy]

Shout if you're Cing it tomorrow, I could do with a short one.

[Crosshair]

Recovery tomorrow
Next Tuesday will be the next chance as need to do some proper Z2 on Saturday/Sunday

[Crosshair]

Sadly I’ve trained myself back to B
My latest ftp test was 318w so 3.3w/kg.

Jumped into a short Dolphin City crit earlier. Never done that shorter version before and it suits me

Felt comfortable if I’m honest. Power was either on or off. Amazingly this averaged out at 336w for 35mins so I got another ftp notification to 325!
Finished 7th on the Zwift screen and got 3rd in B.

Then I did another race but that had a killer hill in it and I had 3x dropouts so lost a couple of big groups.

My friend Rich was racing and we ended up together after a dropout so that spurred me on to beat him in the sprint

A great session all round- 1700kcals burned in the dining room on a wet evening can’t be bad

Sketchy vid here- (need to improve how I screen capture so I can do some race breakdowns )

[weeksy]

Sadly I’ve trained myself back to B
My latest ftp test was 318w so 3.3w/kg.

Jumped into a short Dolphin City crit earlier. Never done that shorter version before and it suits me

Felt comfortable if I’m honest. Power was either on or off. Amazingly this averaged out at 336w for 35mins so I got another ftp notification to 325!
Finished 7th on the Zwift screen and got 3rd in B.

Then I did another race but that had a killer hill in it and I had 3x dropouts so lost a couple of big groups.

My friend Rich was racing and we ended up together after a dropout so that spurred me on to beat him in the sprint

A great session all round- 1700kcals burned in the dining room on a wet evening can’t be bad

Sketchy vid here- (need to improve how I screen capture so I can do some race breakdowns )

LOL none of this shocks me.. you do seem to have the ability to train and work and end up at what i class as a good level. Impressive stuff matey.

I forgot to update but as you've seen, i've been struggling and you commented on calibration. I've only been calibrating in Zwift for the last few months (maybe years) and never do a Wahoo one any more. But i did a Wahoo one and it gave 19s.... According to wahoo it should be 15s... so i needed 1/2 a turn on the tensioner to get back down.
Then booted into Zwift and calibrated in there too.

the ride seemed better and more consistent power without the peaks in HR and seemingly in effort too.

I still don't think i'm anywhwere near my best, but maybe not as bad as i though, but there's other reasons for that, which i can't fix sadly.

[weeksy]

Getting inspriation from Crosshair i went in for a flat one... suits my power profile about the best of any racing i guess.

https://zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=2351230

Hard start and was deep in for the first 15 mins... working hard and sitting with the A/B group of about 20-25 riders, had one other C in there with me but the rest of the Cs were losing ground. Went past the dinosaur and 60s diners but eventually started dropping to the back of the group and lost the wheel, lost 1s and clawed it back by going way deep up to 180bpm.... then lost it again 600m later and no return was happening.

I was left with a gap of 1min 33 to the Cs and some Bs and 9km to go.... i was dropping 6-7s per km to them, so knew if i could hold my power i should be OK... i think I ended up about 40s clear of them which was pretty decent and never really looked much like losing it, well, as long as i could hang in !
Average HR of 172bpm for the effort, can't be doing that too often !!!

[Crosshair]

It’s worth going deep to hold a faster group at all costs I reckon.
Which is fine unless the climbs are longer than 30s as that’s when w/kg takes over
My threshold HR is similar at around 175 The crit was 171 average yesterday and the longer race was 164 where I was fatigued.

I like the double race strategy for training for that reason- a shorter and harder race first depletes the glycogen stores and means you’re more reliant on fat in the longer, steadier second race.
Eventually, the gap in performance between the two should start to creep down until I’m fit enough to race hard for two hours by using more fat in the first race and saving glycogen stores for the second

[weeksy]

It’s worth going deep to hold a faster group at all costs I reckon.
Which is fine unless the climbs are longer than 30s as that’s when w/kg takes over
My threshold HR is similar at around 175 The crit was 171 average yesterday and the longer race was 164 where I was fatigued.

I like the double race strategy for training for that reason- a shorter and harder race first depletes the glycogen stores and means you’re more reliant on fat in the longer, steadier second race.
Eventually, the gap in performance between the two should start to creep down until I’m fit enough to race hard for two hours by using more fat in the first race and saving glycogen stores for the second

I think i'd need the ability to remove my brain and ignore the pain to be able to do that !

[Crosshair]

Another go at the same two races tonight. First race was both easier (on power) but harder tactically. The guys were climbing the short hill faster but also tried a few breakaways. One, with four to go, looked like it might stick so I bridged across but sadly that cost me my sprint later on. So I ended up 4th in B v 3rd.

The second race was Yorkshire and some horrible hills I’ve never ridden before. Evil
Clung on to my mate for a lap but ended up a minute down in 43rd to his 41st (out of 200+).

In order to add progression from last week- I added 30 mins low Z2 on to the end. Because my glycogen stores would have been depleted, that was almost guaranteed to be largely fat burning.

The other good thing, is that if the week goes to pot now- I’ve already got a great session in my legs.

2h30 total, 50 Zwift miles and most importantly- 2000kj’s of work

[weeksy]

https://zwiftpower.com/events.php?zid=2370955

Tough and epic race that. Massive bunch of 35 C's flying round and every now and again dropping some here and there. Lap 2 I tried a split but was a solo so not going to work. Lap 3 there were 2 more splits, one of them I closed down, the other i tried to jump on Nland kick on but again it was closed by the bunch.

So it came down to a group of 30 on the last lap. About 2km out it all went crazy and it was 400w for 600m to hold position. In the end I came into the final hairpin about 400m from the line in p15 or so but as I don't have a sprint I was never going to do well

[MingtheMerciless]

God knows what wattage I was putting out today but it wasn't enough. Bodyboarding today, oh fook do you have to sprint paddle, come off a good wave and start paddling back out and a 5-6ft monster starts rearing up in the distance so you paddle harder and then the bastard starts beginning to curl and break so you paddle harder to get over it before it breaks properly. Today I failed, repeatedly as a big set rolled in (you never catch the first wave of a big set but I'm 52 and still haven't learnt that) and it was a 5-10 minute punishment session in the breaking zone getting washing machined every 10 seconds whilst trying to get back out to the line up. I'm shattered.

[weeksy]

God knows what wattage I was putting out today but it wasn't enough. Bodyboarding today, oh fook do you have to sprint paddle, come off a good wave and start paddling back out and a 5-6ft monster starts rearing up in the distance so you paddle harder and then the bastard starts beginning to curl and break so you paddle harder to get over it before it breaks properly. Today I failed, repeatedly as a big set rolled in (you never catch the first wave of a big set but I'm 52 and still haven't learnt that) and it was a 5-10 minute punishment session in the breaking zone getting washing machined every 10 seconds whilst trying to get back out to the line up. I'm shattered.

Not something I've ever tried but sounds ace!

[Crosshair]

Racing at 7pm

[Crosshair]

Doh. Need an Ethernet cable again to get rid of the buffering. Won my group on the road but I have no idea when any B’s made it across to the lead group

[Crosshair]

Running an Ethernet cable this evening.

[weeksy]

still unwatchable sadly.

[Crosshair]

Oh, Joe said it was ok this week. The replay is okay.